Partners
by Javanyet
Summary: They don't all wear a badge, and you can't keep them safe from everything. One shot.


Merry raced up the stairs from emergency to the surgical unit. Tearing around the corner from the stairwell, she skidded to a halt at the nurses' station and paused to get her bearings. Further down the hall she saw Captain Cragen and Paul Robinette faced by a wildly gesturing Mike. They were obviously arguing. Something Donnie said seemed to push a button in Mike, and he collapsed in a nearby chair, head in his hands. Merry took a deep breath and approached the three men.

"What's the word?" she asked Cragen. Mike didn't move but she went to him and stooped to wrap her arms around his neck and press her face into his hair. He smelled of gunpowder. Oh god, how close had he been? She didn't want to know, not yet.

"Bullet near his spine, one other taken out along with his spleen," she heard Mike's muffled voice. She breathed out in relief.

"So he's gonna make it?" she was looking at Cragen and Robinette, who might be more realistic. They nodded slightly in agreement though their faces were grim. The captain was looking hard at Mike.

"We've gotta figure out what to do with LeBrano," Paul began. Merry could feel Mike tense up. She figured that's what they'd been arguing about, whoever LeBrano was.

"LeBrano is the shooter," Cragen explained, but didn't elaborate. Merry nodded.

"Mike, why don't you let your beautiful wife take you home, get some rest huh?"

Mike sat up but Merry kept her hand at the back of his head. He tipped back to look up at her.

"Come on, Mikey," she said softly, "Captain's right. Let's go home for awhile and we'll come back tomorrow, okay? He's sleeping now anyway, isnt he?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Ignoring the presence of the other two men, she touched his face, kissed him on the temple and whispered, "Let's go home, then. Just for a while, huh? Then we can come back and see Phil when he can see us, too."

Logan sighed wearily and got to his feet, keyed up tight and ready to collapse all at the same time.

"I'll wait for Elaine, you go on home," Cragen told Mike, gripping his shoulder.

Mike turned to face Paul. "Don't you make any fucking deals. Send Gaetan back to Bogota if you have to but don't you cut any deals with that bastard. You know if it was Stone got shot you wouldn't." His voice was hard.

Still, Robinette was noncommittal. "We'll figure something out. But we won't do anything without talking to Ceretta."

This seemed to mollify Mike, who reached an arm around Merry's shoulders as he turned to leave. "Okay. We'll talk to Phil."

"Thanks guys," Merry said to Paul and the captain ,without knowing exactly why. Cragen had his "take care of him" look on. Robinette just nodded.

When they got to the car she opened the passenger door.

"You're in no shape to drive," she told him and for once he didn't argue. He was silent all the way home but reached for her hand and held it firmly, his head dropped back against the headrest, eyes shut. She knew the words would come in their own time. Like they did for Max. It had been just under two years. Most guys went whole careers without having a partner shot, some without even drawing their weapon, and here he had two in such a short time. And again, in such a short time, she was grateful that she was not Elaine Ceretta, as she had been grateful she hadn't been Marie Greavey. And guilty at the same time, and sick with relief, and terrified at how easily it could have gone the other way, that Don Cragen and Paul Robinette could be waiting for her to arrive at her husband's bedside.

When they got in the front door Mike locked up his badge and gun as always, then stood at the highboy with his back to Merry.

"Hey," she called softly.

Mike turned and faced her with a look of such misery she went to him in a rush to wrap her arms around him, to pull his head down to her shoulder where she could whisper in his ear, "I love you, Michael, I love you, it's gonna be okay," and he held onto her so tightly she thought her ribs might break. They stood that way, still as stones, for she didn't know how long, until the jerk in his breathing settled down, until she could feel his heartbeat even out. Finally Mike lifted his head and loosened his grip on her enough to look down into her face.

"How you doin'?" he wanted to know. He knew, christ how he knew what she went through when Max died, some of the same stuff that Olivet had talked to him about, and then he'd talked about it to Merry. Her own brand of survivor guilt, even as she hugged Marie at the funeral being glad she wasn't in her place, Merry looking at him through the whole service and knowing how easy it would have been for her to be wearing black for him instead. He knew how hard it was for her to let him go to work in the days and weeks afterward, to kiss him goodbye like nothing was different when the whole fucking world was different, and not just because Max was gone. And he knew she sidelined Ceretta that third or fourth day, arriving when Mike wasn't there so she could check him out, pretending she was stopping by to see her husband. He knew it at the time, the minute he laid eyes on her sitting at his desk facing Phil like the Grand Inquisitor, though Phil never told him about it until months later and even then Mike had to pry it out of him. Merry needed to trust his partners just the same as he did, trust them to watch his back and keep him safe, only she knew she could never return the favor like he did on the job. He knew there were times when he was in some gut-wrenching case it got to her just as bad, but she just hung in and sat up with him at night, rubbed his back and kissed him and said "You did good, don't forget, you always do."

Mike tried to do the same for her, to let her know he understood, and he spent his share of nights sitting up with her when her fears for him wouldn't let her sleep. But she kept those fears so quiet, so quiet he couldn't always hear them. Not for his sake, really, it was just the way she was. She always heard where he was coming unraveled; he was never all that good at hiding it from anyone but himself. She was always so much better at hiding than he was, even though he knew she didn't do it on purpose. The noise of his job sometimes, too often, nearly drowned out the sounds of her own trouble. He had to look and listen twice as hard as she did. Shit, he wished he was better at it, better at helping Merry navigate the ugly possibilities of his job while they pretended to live a normal life. Right now she was staring at his necktie as if it held the key to the meaning of life.

'"Hey."

When she looked up he saw every sharp terrified edge in her eyes, every grateful guilty thought stabbing her inside.

"Don't, Merry, okay?"

"Don't you, either."

He smiled, almost. "I said it first."

"Well you need it more."

At this he pulled her close in his arms again, pressing her face into his chest and kissing her head once, and again, between words.

"No baby, no I don't."

At two o'clock in the morning Merry was staring out the narrow kitchen window when Mike wrapped around her from behind.

"Hey. Counting the teabags at this indecent hour?"

"I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. I didn't wanna bother you."

"It _bothers _me to wake up alone." Mike turned her around and tipped her face up. "Quit beating yourself up. It's okay to be glad it wasn't me. _I'__m_ glad it wasn't me. It doesn't mean you're glad it was Phil."

"I know it's okay. Like you know you couldn't have stopped it." She huffed in frustration. "We just know _everything_, don't we?"

He kissed her, hard, then gently, pressed his forehead against hers. "Yeah. A regular pair of geniuses. Now leave the teabags alone and come and keep me warm. " She stared up at him in silence and he kissed her again.

"Say _please_," she insisted.

"I just did." But before he herded her back to the bedroom, Mike lifted Merry's hands carefully, brushed his lips along the tips of her fingers where they peeked out of the thick gloves she was wearing. "Hows your lil' paws?"

The arthritis she'd been diagnosed with as a teenager, and done pretty well with considering, had attacked Merry's hands with a vengeance that winter. The pain had often woken her up at night and nothing, not the menthol creams or blue ices or Mikes gentle massages seemed to help much. Then one day he'd seen an elderly woman in a coffee shop wearing black mitts that stopped just short of the ends of her fingers. They looked almost like bandages but more substantial. When he'd asked, she told him they were for her arthritis, to keep her hands warm and keep down swelling, and that they helped with the pain. He'd found out where the lady got them and bought the smallest pair he could find. Unlike the rest of her, which tended toward "luxury" as Mike put it ("the day I get poked by bones, we're through" he'd warned her once when she'd mused she might not be thin enough), Merry's hands appeared small and delicate, though in fact they were finely muscled and very strong until lately. Thankfully the black thermal gloves had done the trick, but some nights were still better than others.

"They're okay." She patted his cheek with a gloved "paw". Merry knew her husband loved her hands from the way he held and petted them, stroked her palms and played with her fingers almost without noticing he was doing it when they sat together in front of the TV or rode in the car. He held her hand no matter where they were, to the point where his coworkers teased him about it.

"Afraid she'll wander off, Logan?" Profaci had asked him once in the office.

"Makin' sure I can't slap you silly," she'd shot back.

Arms around her waist, Mike walked Merry in front of him back to the bedroom and steered her into bed with him right behind. Then he wrapped her up against him, cuddling her like a big teddy bear.

"Sure you're okay?" he asked her.

"Yeah, really. As okay as you. Hah."

If some guys projected negative energy when they were stressed, when he was in a pressure cooker Mike poured out affection like a broken faucet. "When the world is going to shit, I like to remember what isn't," he'd explained early on in their relationship. So many cops brought the bad stuff home, they couldn't help it she supposed, but her unbelievable luck was that her man's "neurosis" ran just the opposite. The more clingy and attentive Mike got, the more she'd ask what had happened at work. Sometimes he'd tell her, sometimes he'd just shrug and give her another kiss, take her hands or pull her into his lap for a cuddle.

"And the babe gets the rebound," he cracked now. "Love you, Peebee." P.B., for Psycho Bitch, his affectionate nickname.

"I guess I could do worse." Verbal minimalists both of them, except in the most life-or-death crisis. Then, "Lie, to me, okay?"

When things got rough Merry begged for some stock fairy tales. It was something that had started when Max was killed. Things that were foolish, and could never be true, but like hearing a foreign language just the sound of the words was what she was after. Even Olivet said that it could be therapeutic as long as they both understood it was "functional fiction".

"You'll never wear black for me," Mike whispered, knowing how bad off she must be to be asking. He pulled her closer, held her head on his shoulder as he kissed her cheek. "I am gonna get so old you'll be wheeling me around with white hair and listening to me bitch about the Yankees when they play on the moon. I'm bulletproof, baby, I'm invisible and faster than Superman. I'll be with you forever. You're married to the only supercop in the city. Get it?" She sighed a little.

"Yeah. Thanks, Mikey. I love you."

"You could do worse."

They fell asleep with him cradling her against him as if protecting her from the world. 99 times out of 100 the opposite was true; Mike would lie on Merry's shoulder, face against her neck, and she'd stroke his hair as the strain of the day drained out of him to be discarded with the next day's trash. Strangely, at times like this, being able to take over from the emotional do-it-yourselfer he married seemed to keep Logan's own demons at bay as well, and made him feel like he was good for something besides moving one step behind real time while his partner got shot.


End file.
